Lovepop + Red Bull: Taking Flight at Flugtag

Ever wondered what it would be like to fling yourself off a 28-foot barge on the Charles River in a non-mechanical homemade plane?

So did we. This year, Lovepop is proud to announce that we’ll be participating in the 2016 Red Bull Flugtag competition - where we’ll be doing just that.

Red Bull hosts the competition every year, and it’s invariably a ridiculous endeavor. Naturally, we decided to throw our (paper) hats into the ring. With the help of four Lovepop team members, Wombi - our C.E.O - will fly our homemade love-plane into the Charles on August 20th.

It’s not all fun and games, however - we need to fly far, we need to make a creative plane, and we need to put on a show. There will be tens of thousands of people in the crowd. There will be costumes. There will be dancing. There will be judges watching closely. You can watch closely too - here’s the event page.

So how’s this actually going to happen? What kind of plane will we be flying? What is our dance like? Is it ready?? WILL WOMBI SURVIVE THIS?? Please calm down. Here is a story to calm your nerves.

It all started with an idea: We rendered...We drew...We designed. Fortunately, we had a lot of Red Bull to help us through this process.

Then, we built a model and made lots of changes.

Next, we headed to Artisan’s Asylum for a big build day - and got our Falconboard wing parts printed by the magnificent John Houghton on the CNC mill.

We took a trip to rural Massachusetts to a little bamboo forest.Then cut and glassed up the bamboo frame with fiberglass tape.

Next, it was time for a flight test. First, we had to get the thing over a fence.